The Mars rover has stuck a pinch of the fine sand and dust of the Red Planet into its Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) instrument for its second soil analysis.
Martian sand in true colour
An earlier scoop of Martian surface has already popped out results from Curiosity's CheMin instrument showing the mineralogical makeup of the …

Check it when it comes out the other end as well!

Staggering photos

I keep getting bowled over by the stunning quality of this rover's photos. It's as if they set it loose in New Mexico or something. You can easily imagine being there.

Studying the images from dozens of past space exploration missions, I've come to appreciate the haziness / graininess / lack of contrast as being par for the course, given where the image was taken, i.e., deep space or some far-out planet or moon. But now I've learned the truth: those earlier images mostly just suck. (Well, for human eyes anyway.)

I'd love to send newer rovers and probes back to our old stomping grounds...the moon, Venus, etc. What a difference the newer cameras would make.